Well, what follows isn't exactly a "rant", but it's a very informative &
insightful piece by Paul Killington (of "Maria
Daines", at MIXPOSURE)... we want to
thank him for taking the time to share his "Pivotal Moments" with us, & hope
you'll visit this prolific artist:

PAUL KILLINGTON’S PIVOTAL MOMENTS

It’s about 1973, it’s Wembley Arena,
and Robert Plant is screaming. The heavyweights of rock are at full throttle,
this must be the loudest rock concert ever, but no one complains, we love it.
Opening for Zep was 'Stone The Crows'. After a few bars of their opening
number, on struts Maggie Bell, their vocalist. She’s in a white cowgirl outfit,
she grabs a mic stand at a rakish angle and starts stomping her foot and belting
out a blues rocker. We’ve never heard of this band, and my mate turns to me and
shouts – ‘It’s a f***ing chick man!’ Janis Joplin was the first to do this sort
of thing in a male dominated genre. Maggie Bell was the English Janis and it
was a pivotal moment for us, just one of many for me in the late 60’s and early
70’s. My life seems to have been littered with these moments, and when it came
to music, it was an eruption of creativity the like of which I don’t think will
be seen again. Apart from influencing me as a musician, these things affected
me as a person, and gave me a take on life that has endured throughout the
years.

Four years earlier I attended my
first outdoor rock concert. As the facilities were basic compared to today’s
extravaganzas, we decided we had to get out to find some food. Looking down the
day’s programme we saw that the next band up were Led Zeppelin. Having never
heard of them, we saw this as an ideal opportunity to leave the arena. A week
later, I was getting my mind blown by Led Zep one, with ‘Communication
Breakdown’ causing my father to run in from the garden demanding to know what
the hell this noise was blasting out of our mono radiogram.

Where I lived you could always go
and see a live band, something that seems sadly lacking today. At a live music
pub three miles from me, every Wednesday night you could see the likes of Deep
Purple, Yes, Family, Black Sabbath and Rory Gallagher, etc., etc.,. One night
Deep Purple announced ‘This is the last time we’ll be playing like this’ they
weren’t that well known to us and were slightly poppy, the next time I heard
them was when I bought their album ‘In Rock’, this change of style was obviously
a good move as the new direction catapulted them into rock stardom, so again
this was a pivotal moment witnessed by yours truly.

Friday nights were spent at my local
youth club, of course watching the bands. They all brought something new with
them and there seemed to be no end to their originality, among them the likes of
'Supertramp' and 'Hawkwind'. Many of them never progressed on to greatness but
all deserved to. One tremendous band were called ‘Good Habit’ and dressed in
monks outfits. Their guitarist offered to sell me his 1959 Les Paul for £150.
I was about 17 or 18 and I didn’t quite have the cash but I wasn’t that bothered
because you could buy Gibsons anywhere. A 1959 Les Paul now? Name your price.
Roundabout this time a progressive outfit called ‘Yes’ played at a dance at my
school but they didn’t go down too well with a rather straight audience.

I’d always been a big fan of ‘The
Who’ as a schoolboy and later one night in about 1968; I saw them in a local
club. I was thrilled to hear them playing their big hits, but was then somewhat
disturbed as I watched them smashing up their equipment towards the end of the
night. I left the place on some kind of high, thinking that there was more to
this rock n’ roll stuff than I thought. The next time I saw them was at the
Oval cricket ground in London about five years later, and Keith Moon was playing
the drums with a cricket bat. During this period there were so many great gigs
and memorable moments that to me any one of my age whose life didn’t get
affected in some way must have been brain dead.

Much of my weekends were spent in
London. A regular excursion on Fridays after the youth club was the Lyceum in
the Strand. It was an all-nighter with a series of great bands. I remember
‘Ten Years After’ and ‘Uriah Heep’ among others. It was just another major
happening, and being a fully-fledged hippy, I really did feel part of a movement
and this music was the catalyst.

Saturday afternoons were spent
wandering the hip areas of London – Portobello road, Kings Road and Kensington
Market buying clothes and records and other things. The aroma of josticks and
various herbs seemed to emanate from everywhere, and people in colourful
clothing and long hair drifted around in this peaceful, magical atmosphere.
This was my world and it was a world we sincerely, naively believed would one
day become the norm, and the planet would become a wonderful place. It was fun
to dream and of course we were horribly wrong, but it was a way of living, an
attitude that stayed with me and millions of my generation throughout the
world. The hippy motto of love and peace was so innocently basic but so right,
and I’ll think that way until the day I die.

Saturday nights usually meant a trip
to another local venue called the Roundhouse at Dagenham in Essex. This was a
sweaty club, which was always packed and had a great atmosphere. Once again the
list of legendary bands appearing there was endless including Led Zeppelin. The
intensity of the performances there was incredible. One pivotal moment for me
was staring at Paul Kossoff, Free’s guitarist, from about three feet away, and
being transfixed not just by his playing but also by the depth of feeling, which
he seemed to exude. One of our favourites was the African band ‘Osibisa’ whose
good time rhythm’s coupled with rock rubbed off on everyone. A couple of years
later my friends and I drove a truck across Africa, and in Lagos, Nigeria, we
saw Osibisa at the sports arena there. We actually met them backstage, and when
we mentioned the Roundhouse they erupted into gales of laughter at the craziness
of it all.

After rising about mid-day Sunday
morning, breakfast was bypassed and it was straight to the pub for me. In the
summer we’d go out into the country with guitars, harmonicas, flutes, plastic
water containers as drums and anything to make a noise. An essential item was a
portable record player, which was the pinnacle of high tech at this time.
Carrying that and a bunch of vinyl albums under your arm was a small price to
pay to be able to listen to the wonderful music which seemed to drift across the
sky and was borne on the wind.

Sunday afternoons was the heyday of
another Roundhouse, the one at Chalk Farm in London. This was THE place for the
‘heads’ (as we used to call them) to gather. True to its name it was round and
all along the perimeter walls, psychedelic multi-coloured patterns of moving,
changing bubbles and liquid iridescence were projected. This was done amazingly
by my erstwhile band mate Bob Swinn who I didn’t know at the time and wasn’t to
meet until years later. We sat on the floor and grooved to some of our
favourite bands, among those that appeared there were Jethro Tull, Rolling
Stones, Humble Pie, Jeff Beck, I could go on a lot longer of course. When
Monday morning came around, it would be back to whatever job I had at the time
to get the money to go to some festival or other.

One such outdoor concert was at a
place called Shepton Mallet near Bath in Somerset. The list of bands appearing
that weekend reads like a who’s who of rock history – Pink Floyd, Moody Blues,
Frank Zappa, Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Led
Zeppelin, and on and on. Call me old fashioned, but in thirty years time I
doubt if seeing a list of today’s bands could conjure such wonderful images and
the immediate recall of how it felt to be there.

I guess longevity maybe dying out in
today’s fickle society. Keith Richards said he saw the Stones as guinea pigs to
see if older people could still do it. Well as long as he’s still doing it then
I’m still young. As a musician, I feel as if I’m keeping something alive,
something that never died in me and never will. I’m thankful that I lived
through what I did and that I’m part of a unique generation. I hope some of
what I do may give some inspiration perhaps in a subtle and insidious way and
pass on how I feel.